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When you inspect a packet of M&Ms, among the most popular candies in the US, you'll see recognizable ingredients like sugar, skimmed milk powder, and cocoa butter. However, many more items are less known: gum arabic, dextrin, palm wax, soy lecithin, and E100.

There are 34 components in M&Ms, with at least thirty countries participating in providing them. Each has its distinct production network that converts base substances into ingredients – cocoa into cocoa liquor, plants into sweetener, oil into artificial coloring.

These components then travel globally to a central processing facility where they are combined and transformed into tiny multicolored candy-coated chocolates.

It is now more widely recognized that agricultural networks are a significant contributor of the climate crisis. Researchers can examine land clearing for farming or methane emissions from livestock. Yet the ecological footprint of ultra-processed foods – like these candies – is less clear and is only now to be understood. One reason they have been challenging to evaluate is the inherent complexity of UPFs: these factory-produced foods include a vast array of ingredients and processes to put them together, making it nearly impossible to track.

But it doesn't mean it's unimportant. Since UPFs take over US grocery store shelves and eating habits – they now account for seventy percent of food sold in supermarkets, and more than half of calories consumed – experts say that understanding their ecological cost is essential to build a more climate-friendly agricultural system.

What We Know

Although researchers are just beginning to investigate the ecological effects of ultra-processed foods, existing knowledge about them is concerning.

"The greater the processing foods are, the more deleterious they are to human health and the environment," stated a senior researcher. The main reason, he clarifies, is that the ingredients are so resource demanding. Once assembled, the toll expands significantly.

Take the popular candy. The initial phase in producing the sweets is farming for chocolate beans, sugar, milk products and palm.

It has been well-documented that farming for components like chocolate drives ever increasing rates of deforestation worldwide. For over a century, agricultural expansion has driven nearly ninety percent of worldwide forest loss, which has been responsible for thirty percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Large corporations have been called out in the past for agricultural methods in their supply chain, and have since created sustainability plans, but these do not resolve that industrial farming are, at their core, unsustainable.

Then there's, sweetener, milk solids and palm oil – likewise major carbon dioxide sources.

Furthermore are the factory-produced ingredients like artificial colors – possibly the hallmark of ultra-processing – which these candies contain 13 different types of. The blue candies are dyed with E132 and E133; these colorants are mostly made in food dye manufacturing hotspots Asia, via a chemical reaction of aromatic hydrocarbons with diazonium salt, catalyzed by the elements copper and chromium.

Creating soy lecithin, an ingredient made from soybean oil that's used to change the consistency of candy, requires steps like oil refining in a hot reactor, chemically isolating fat molecules, bleaching using hydrogen peroxide and dehydrating under vacuum pressure. And, a sweetener, starts off as maize that gets soaked in chemicals before being ground, divided and dried. From there, it's decomposed into simpler compounds using biological catalysts and chemicals, and then recrystallized.

While highly manufactured candies are among the most damaging, different types of UPFs are burdensome on the environment as well. Consider a well-known chip, which has thirty-nine components. Corn is the primary component, and for every acre grown, 1,000kg of carbon dioxide is released to the atmosphere. Similar to other corporations, manufacturers have created their own sustainability promises, but many of these promises are underpinned by practices that are considered superficial eco-claims.

As a result, researchers have started to calculate the ecological cost of ultra-processed foods.

One analysis estimated that well-known sweets generate at least 13.2kg of greenhouse gases per kilo produced. With annual production of more than six hundred million kilograms in the US, this would mean that the candies emit at least three point eight million tonnes of carbon dioxide – making up zero point one percent of yearly carbon output in the country. But, this is just a calculation based on accessible information; the true cost is likely much higher, experts say.

There's a "unknown element" when it comes to emissions tracking in the processed food industry, says Patrick Callery who researches how corporations engage with the environmental challenge. "There is so much uncertainty as production networks get complicated."

The Gaps We Don't Know

Calculating precisely of the environmental toll of UPFs is extremely challenging, given that, by definition, UPFs consist of numerous components and a high volume of opaque processes. Ingredients aren't just combined like one would do to make a home-cooked meal at home. Instead, these ingredients are chemically modified, some parts stripped away, and tastes, colors or textures added in – and it's unclear what the impact of these processes are because so many suppliers and components are involved.

A further factor is that all UPFs are the creations of manufacturing corporations that have little incentive to reveal their environmental footprint and may not fully understand it to start with.

As an example, major brands don't farm primary components themselves, but instead depend on numerous growers that may not have accurate carbon accounting measures in place. This means that carbon output from large manufacturers may be underestimated. Analysts noted that corporations "lack actual data, so they use estimated values, which are approximations."

Specialists say that corporations provide reports on simple things like shipping, which are simpler to measure, and often omit or convolute the farming-related carbon of their product. After all, disclosing significant carbon output contradicts the interests of major manufacturers, so the intricate assessments needed to establish the carbon footprint of large-scale agriculture and complex manufacturing methods used to make UPF ingredients remain understudied.

"The primary goal of ultra-processed foods is money," stated Fardet, pointing out that they're designed to be attractive, convenient and enjoyable to eat.

"The majority of individuals in the manufacturing sector's production network are not concerned with global warming from an ethical perspective, but they are interested in profit," explained a specialist. He explains that to change these motivations, the cost of foods and ingredients would need to include their impact on our global environment. But that would require official policies and economic consequences based on the actual ecological impact of UPFs.

Why It Is Important

At just under $2, the price of M&Ms at the supermarket barely represents their real impact on the planet. But to tackle these problems with manufactured products, not only a minor adjustments to the component selection are needed.

"Reducing the salt, or sweetener of just a single item is just greenwashing," said Fardet. "We need to transform the whole picture." To do that, he recommended consuming more locally sourced, whole foods, which often take far fewer resources and transit to create, and therefore have a much smaller carbon footprint.

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